lens flare

5 summer stories

I did a little blog for Gulfstream again, five boards to ride this summer.............

https://www.gulfstreamsurfboards.co.uk/2017/07/07/5-boards-ride-summer/

just six months............

 

Just six months until it's all small clean warm waves, short wetsuits and long evenings. Patience.....

Happy New Year everyone

CP by Wavedreamer, Saunton Foil by Gulfstream

the way we were...

Sweet little clip from a sunny summers afternoon at my local from Pete Hill. Makes you realise that the logging standard here ain't bad for a surfing minnow like Devon. Even I managed to sneak a couple of waves in at the 0.50 - 1.12 mark!

I'd love to roll down to the beach in the sun right now but the recent storms have left it looking like a different place with cliff falls and the demolition of Jules's Beach hut Office. How the massive sand movement affects our high tide wave remains to be seen. We are all hoping the zippy left into the corner has survived!

swan lake

Well what a fine weekend it turned out after all! Sunshine and a lovely little swell.

Despite my somewhat gloomy post on friday morning, friday afternoon brought classic small zippers which i surfed on my own for an hour in sunshine with just a beautiful landward vista for company. It's so wonderful to be able to get a solo surf in these ever more crowded times.

Saturday was a lesson in opposites with the weekend warrior crowd in full effect. Enjoyable just the same for bumping into a couple of ex-locals who i used to surf with a lot when i first moved here but haven't seen for maybe 3 or 4 years. In fact, when i first started surfing i remember watching one of them in awe during what must have been a hotdoggers contest on a summer saturday trip from Bristol. Watching him cross step and hang five effortlessly, i was impressed and longed to be able to do the same. I never imagined then where i would be now........

castles in the sand

fall into the sea, eventually!

freshly mown..

A freshly shaped 10 foot Gulfstream saunton foil model, waiting on the racks while the foam dust settles.

I only make it over there every so often but it's always a pleasure to hang out with Jools at the gulfstream factory for an hour or so. He's always stoked on the latest batch of boards coming through and really cares about offering a proper handmade custom manufacturing service.

les conches

Gotta love french beach break!

KOOOOOOOK!!!!

 

I'd completely forgotton sending Dan anything for the latest installment of Kook's palindromic surf smorgasbord so i was really excited to spot my little ode to summer evening stoke nestling in the corner of the first page.

 

Yet another reason to buy it and support independant, non corporate surf multi-national mouthpiece, grass roots, authentic surf culture

keeping it old school

pensive......

BGA strikes his best catalogue pose while I lie panting on the grass after he lent me his spare bike then me cycle up a steep hill back in may. Jesting aside I owe Al big thank you's for lending me his old cannondale so i could find a new way of scaring myself/ having fun on those many crap surf days we seem to have suffered this summer! It's just about kept me sane and in some semblance of fitness.

 

It's wet and wild out there again today and it seems like we've gone straight to winter again. Almost seems like we've just had one season of grey wetness all year. I feel like i've hardly surfed over the last month or so and my stoke is at a low ebb from a surfing point of view. Thank goodness for alternative entertainment! There is some hope on the horizon, if the wind forecast holds and the logs might just get dusted off at the weekend.

 

In other news, the new iphone 5 is pretty cool and more importantly doesn't randomly crash at annoying moments like my old 3. Hopefully i can waste some time on it later watching the quik pro from france. Wow thats a heavy beachbreak. When a surfer of jeremy flores calibre is visibly shaken after a wipeout/hold down you know there's a lot of water moving around!

hut, hut, hut

Possibly now one of the most photographed sites in North Devon! Full marks to Jules for selecting such bright colours!

I wonder if beach huts are a british thing? I cant remember noticing them on my limited foreign beach experience. I will continue my research from a french beach break perspective this week, hopefully in sunshine and better swell than Portugal provided.

Vive La France!

the sun always shines on tv

Seems like i'm not allowed to embed the video i had lined up for this post. It's called anecdote by louis english and it's pretty cool, hopefully its still here. If not you'll have to make do with a suitably apocalyptic phone pic of Saunton, moments before another summer downpour!


showing my age somewhat with the title of this post eh?

Old but new footage of messrs Knost and Mell from the land where the sun never sleeps....

pick up the planer..

This little run of summer waves and weather has given me the first proper chance to run my newest log through it's paces. It's a 9'4 "mod log" from the last batch of boards Randall shaped before hanging up his planer indefinately last year. I loved the look of it when Neil showed it to me and wished i'd had the cash and the space in the shed to buy it then so when it popped up for sale on magic seaweed i wasn't about to make the same mistake twice!

Template wise it's pretty much what a lot of people have been moving towards recently, less Nuuhiwa noserider and more Hot Generation/ Magic Sam with a greenough fin, thin pinched rails, widepoint pulled back a little, plenty of roll out into the rails and only a shallow nose concave. The nose is fairly narrow at 17 3/4 and the tail is wide at 16 1/4. Despite being 23 wide and 3 in the center there's not a great deal of foam in there. It's similar to the boards Dane Peterson has been riding recently or Chonoski's "involvement" Mctavish's

It's not really a "saunton board" being designed for waves with a little more zip but like most boards with a wide point back of center, as long as there is a steepish pocket to tuck into there's plenty of scope to get piggies dangling. Off the tail it's whippy in a pivoty way and it's got a nice responsive lively feel despite it's volan glass. In fact my only negative so far would be that it paddles really slowly although i'm not entirely sure why as it's fast in trim.

It's a crying shame Randall is no longer making boards, his logs are great and he makes a great mini-simmons too. His templates are spot on and the boards are beautifully finished with some very neat creative touches. Mine has a carbon fibre cloth asymmetric tail patch for example!

I think everyone i've known to ride one of his shapes has rated it and there are more than a few people who would like to get a board off him if he can ever be persuaded to pick up a planer again. In a way it's a little bit pointless posting a detailed review since none of you can currently order a board off him so perhaps this can form another little prick at his concious that his skills are prized over here and an occasional trip to the shaping bay wouldn't be such a bad thing!

go west?!

business as usual..

 

After a run of fun little groundswell waves a couple of weeks ago it's back to the British summer time we've become used to, finding the pockets of sunshine between the showers and making the best of the onshores and windswell while the holidaymakers shelter behind their windbreaks and brave the low temperatures in their speedo's. That said, yesterday had a fun little wave despite the onshores and was topped off by pushing my daughter into a whitewater wave and watching her get to her feet for the first time! She's goofy but I can live with that! Big smiles all round in our household last night!

If you're around Newquay this week, the relentless boardmaster's is on which is best described as a mini US open type thing. Elsewhere, there's a couple of interesting things on the horizon...

Fresh from his semi's berth at the joel tudor duct tape in spain ( with an invite to the next one in malibu) James Parry is putting on his own single fin thing. The Hip Wiggling Invitiational Single Fin Gala is at gwithian on the 3 & 4th september and promises to be a beacon of style in a contest season filled with butt wiggling and people attempting lame airs on longboards.

A couple of weeks after that, Royal and friends are hosting the European Fish Fry at Crackington Haven in North Cornwall on the 17th September. Visiting US shapers to be confirmed but it promises as usual to be a fine day of surfing and chinstroking over alternative board design. Hopefully my brownie point bank account will be full enough to release me from familial duties for the day and i might see some of you there!

rhyme for the summertime..

By the time Garret "G Love" Dutton kickstarted Jack Johnson's career with his Rodeo Clowns single , he was already four fine albums deep into a career that's still going strong today. I forget exactly where i heard him for the first time, i think it was on mark radcliffe's old late night show on radio 1 in the early nineties, or maybe on the soundtrack to an early snowboard video at my friend ed's house. What i do remember is how the mix of blues sounds with a strong groove and elements of hip hop topped with g love's laidback delivery was something i'd never heard before. Hell he just oozed cool!

After starting out busking acoustic blues on the streets of philadelphia before hooking up with "special sauce" his sound has evolved several times over the years but it's his early stuff i still like best. He's a very fine slide/acoustic blues guitarist and really underated. check his youtube channel for some evidence! (under the moniker phillyglove) He's still one of the best artists i've seen live and his first couple of albums are well worth re-visiting or discovering for that matter!

sunset special

I'm not going to lie and say it was epic. Too high, small, one turn and your done p-land. But the sunset was beautiful and it was just what the doctor ordered tonight.

summer reality

 With the sun and the waves come the crowds and the frustration of not being able to get a parking space in the lot or a wave unmolested by kooks. Marlow has the right idea perhaps having just invested in a 10 foot Bic. Unhampered by a nice gloss coat he's prepared to mow them down!

I'm thinking a padded paddle and an SUP, then i could evolve some kind of medieval jousting moves!

hai - Ya!!!

Something about doing these feels super fun